“Oh, shit,” you whispered.
“What?” I was clueless, until I saw Dante behind them. I’d met your cousin before, once or twice at your house. He called me Joyride, which made no sense, but which he seemed to find hilarious. He spotted us and grinned, sauntering over with a cocky, amused look on his face that immediately gave me goosebumps. It was the kind of this-should-be-fun look of someone about to start something.
“Well, now the party’s here,” you said with a grimace, taking another drink. You’d gone from charmingly off-guard to rigidly on edge in the span of seconds. It was like you knew we’d passed some point of no return.
“What up, cuz!” Dante cried, embracing you in one of those back-pounding bro hugs. He stepped back and looked between us, his smile widening. “Am I interrupting something? I hope?”
“No,” you said quickly. Standing side by side, you and Dante looked like brothers. He was shorter and skinnier, and he’d shaved his hair down to a shadowy skullcap, but there was no mistaking the family resemblance.
“Nice to see you enjoying yourselves.” He nodded at my cup and winked. “A little party never killed nobody, right?”
“It’s soda,” I said, gritting my teeth. Over by the door, one of the big guys kicked over the cup pyramid and laughed.
“That sucks.” Dante threw an arm around you. “At least Little D got the real stuff.”
“Don’t called me that,” you said. “And what are you, stalking me? I thought you worked Fridays.”
“I am working,” Dante said, taking your beer and finishing it in one pull. “I told you I’d get your fancy-ass school, with or without your help.”
Liv. I felt my jaw tense. Dante was the hookup she had been so excited about. She’d gone behind your back. I took an angry swallow of Coke that just made me cough.
“Easy there, Joyride,” Dante laughed, and I glared at him.
“She called you,” you said. It wasn’t a question.
“What can I say? Your girl knows what she wants.” Dante smiled in a way that made me want to punch him. “Know where she’s at?”
“Who are they?” You asked, nodding across the room at the guys by the door. They kept their hands in their pockets, and not in a laid-back way.
“Those are my associates,” Dante said dismissively. “Don’t worry about them. Just point me toward the lady of the house.”
Liv and Dave were still standing by the TV, talking close, crushed together by the swell of people crowded around the speakers. He looked a lot more relaxed than he had a few minutes before. He might not have wanted to be at the party, but he wanted to be close to Liv.
“Just give it to me, and I’ll get it to her,” you said.
“You got a hundred bucks for me?” Dante held out his palm for a second and then burst out laughing. I wanted to move but there was nowhere to go except the kitchen, which had suddenly become the setting for a game of spin the bottle. Across the pass-through, I watched a junior girl with chin acne and electric pink braids make out with Matt Fareed, one of the senior actors, their eyes closed, their chins moving in long, slow ellipses. It gave me a flashback to sixth grade, at our first middle school party, when Liv had kissed Kris Harris like that, on the rug in his basement, while all of our parents ate pasta salad upstairs. Kris Harris, the boy I used to slip poems to under the desk when the teacher’s back was turned, the one I’d asked her to talk to about me. I wondered if she ever had.
“Stop playing,” I heard Dante say, and I remember thinking that even though he set me on edge, at least he would interrupt Liv’s conversation with Dave. That was what I was worried about. I was so consumed with jealousy that I couldn’t see what was really happening, right in front of me.
I wish I’d understood that the game Liv was playing was bigger than me, and more dangerous than cruel.
Maybe then I could have done something. Maybe then I could have stopped it.
Chapter Six
January 7
126 days left
ETHAN GOT TO LIV FIRST, as usual. While Dante was mixing up a rum and Coke, Ethan stumbled out of the bathroom and made a beeline for her, which gave me the excuse I’d been waiting for to run interference. I wasn’t proud of myself as I crossed the room with the sole intention of ruining my best friend’s game, but I was emboldened by what you’d said earlier, before Dante had showed up. You were right: I’d stood up for myself that afternoon, in front of all my teachers and my entire class, risking everything I’d worked so hard for. If I could do that, I could stand up for myself in front of anyone.
“Hey!” I said aggressively, stepping into the eight-inch gap between Liv and Dave. Ethan was on her other side, his hand on the small of her back. He’d only beaten me by about five seconds but was already holding court. Typical.